Yobie Benjamin, writing for The San Francisco Chronicle, is reporting what nobody else in the corporate media is reporting — a mysterious disease has stricken crops in Mississippi and it may be connected to the BP oil gusher.

“It seems like damage brought by the oil gusher has spread way beyond the ocean, coastal areas and beaches. Collateral damage now appears to include agricultural damage way inland Mississippi,” writes Benjamin. The disease has caused widespread damage to plants from weeds to farmed organic and conventionally grown crops.

Benjamin believes the disease is the result of BP spraying the oil dispersant Corexit 9500 in the Gulf of Mexico. Corexit 9500 is believed to be responsible for widespread reports of oil cleanup crews reporting various injuries including respiratory distress, dizziness and headaches.

“Dispersants have never been applied on this scale, leaving environmental scientists guessing about the consequences. Corexit may have caused seven cleanup workers to be admitted to the hospital with shortness of breath and nausea,” reports Popular Science.

“Many have focused their concerns about Corexit… on what it’s doing under the water. But as we know, the oceans are part of a larger precipitation cycle, and scientists are worried that soon the consequences of using dispersants could be falling from the sky,” writes Beth Buczynski for Care2, an environmental website.

The EPA asked BP to stop using Corexit, which is banned in 18 countries due to its toxicity, but the oil transnational has refused.

There is no direct evidence that the crop damage in Mississippi is the result of Corexit 9500 falling from the sky. However, as Benjamin notes, there “is very strong suspicion that ocean winds have blown Corexit aerosol plumes or droplets and that dispersants have caused the unexplained widespread damage.”

A tropical storm located between the northern coast of Honduras and Grand Cayman has developed into the first tropical depression of the Atlantic hurricane season. “On shore, residents along the coast are also concerned about what could happen if the storm pushes ashore, overwhelming efforts to protect beaches, wetlands and waterways and making an already bad situation much worse,” reports KWTX in Waco, Texas.

“Tropical storms usually form in the far eastern Atlantic early in the season. But as the Gulf heats and the oil continues to spill into the open waters, that concern and storm potential will grow together,” Dr. Remata Reddy, who studies and teaches tropical meteorology at Jackson State University, told WAPT in Mississippi. “As oil evaporates and comes into contact with a tropical storm, the chances of acid rain falling within the storm are possible.”

If the storm reaches the United States and plants come down with the mystery disease afterward, we will have a pretty good idea Corexit is responsible.

And if Corexit is killing crops, what is it doing to humans and animals?